THE RELATIONSHIP OF ART AND SCIENTIFIC HUMAN COGNITION IN THE WORKS OF F. DOSTOEVSKY AND A. UKHTOMSKY

Human cognition is a process of objective reality reflection in human consciousness obtaining  new knowledge about the inner world. Scientific knowledge seeks to identify common patterns of life, while art is focused on the unique personality, author’s subjective vision of the world. In contrast to the imaginative and emotional nature of artistic works science is inherent in intellectualism and rationalism. However, these differences are often rather arbitrary. Many scholars have emphasized the role of imagery and esthetic experiences in the process of scientific creativity. Science often opened new facets to the possibilities of the artistic world development and art often gave the immediate impetus to scientific thought about a person [2–5].

Down the narrow streets crossing the Nevsky prospect in St. Petersburg the great writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in the XIX century and the great scientist Alexey Ukhtomsky in the XX century daily walked as we now. Living in a different time they became very close to each other due to their common needs to solve the riddle of human life. We can clearly see how artistic and scientific ways of cognition are interlaced through the unity of the worldview and spiritual communion.

Today we increasingly understand the value of reading in the personality development. Reading of literature can and should be meaningful, enriching experience of self-discovery, helping to vital self-determination. Life history characters of world literature provide an opportunity to reflect on the essence of human life. We may compare them with our own life and mentally "try on" seeing firsthand the ugliness of "dead-end" paths [2].

First and foremost this applies to domestic literature. The features of Russian literature are associated primarily with the fact that it is the power of art recreates the Russian worldview. Russian inner world is diverse, but the need for harmony in the integration of opposites in the higher integrity of more intuitive understanding of life associated with belief and acceptance of spiritual values. Perhaps the most vivid opening of the life spiritual context was reflected in Russian literature of the XIX century. Here can be called by many wonderful names. However, the inexhaustibility and the depth of Dostoevsky remain unsurpassed.

Literature is an inexhaustible storehouse of psychological knowledge. We are going through a difficult time mentioned by A. Ukhtomsky in highlighting the history of periods when it is easier to a person easier to appeal to art in order to quench the spiritual thirst than to religious traditions. The modern person has to them such a path: the integrity of vision of the life-span, depth of attention to life situations and actions in literature, in its best examples have becoming classics. Unfortunately, today it is often perceived as a form of entertainment, kind of fun, although it requires a serious relationship. "The power of art is in the personality open mastering; the personality case is to develop and further prepare the ground for the perception of certain ideas. Abstract idea, abstract sermon, "scientific truth" will be perceived only when the soil has already been prepared, when it has deeply mastered the idea," ‒ A. Ukhtomsky, the great Russian scientist and a deeply religious person, uniquely combining knowledge and faith, science and religion, wrote in his "Marginal Notes" [8, 283]. He said this is no accident: his fascination with Dostoevsky contributed to the scientific discovery of the universal law of dominant – leading areas of domestic activity operating at all levels of existence – from the physical to the spiritual [9].

Dostoevsky is open to all who can perceive spiritual phenomenon, since it describes in detail the mechanism of their development, the ambivalence, the contradictory nature of existence, the struggle between good and evil in the human soul. According to Dostoevsky a person is multidimensional reaching the moral plane, and is evaluated in accordance with its laws. The purpose of Dostoevsky is to show the possibilities of spiritual growth, that is why he pays special attention to the positive beginning of a person. However, he depicts the struggle of good and evil in a person and the victory of good [1].

A. Ukhtomsky is one of the few scientists managed to realize the approach to a person cognition in unity of spirit, soul and body. The concept of a person based on the principle of dominance is worked out by A. Ukhtomsky on the intersection of different scientific disciplines of physiology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, ethics, theology, literature and history. He organically linked the natural science understanding of behavior with the laws of communication developed by him about moral behavior deriving the meaning of human life beyond the natural, purely physiological limits.

The basis of the dominant existence evidence has become the physiological laboratory research. However, the dominant principle was not limited to the domain of physiological processes, but extend to mental, personality, existence and cognition. According to the ideas of A. Ukhtomsky a person is not passive in the reality perception; the dominant is the direction of internal activity, the main behavior orientation. The world perception is determined by us and our dominants. The dominants stand between us and reality. Only when you overcome yourself and your individualism, while cultivating dominant to another person as the most precious for a person, it is revealed to a person, and from that moment he first deserve to speak about him as about the person.

This means the ability to find the approach to each individual, to be able to enter his shell to heal his life. Life for others gives meaning to the lives of their own. In this regard, A. Ukhtomsky suggested the principle of the "creative embellishment", according to which a person should carry out a constant search and a positive forecast for development of the best in the world and people. A.A. Ukhtomsky analyzed in terms of the dominant the works of art, Russian and world history. A number of psychological problems that today seem to be unresolved because of its complexity, has received an original and convincing solution in the works of the scientist.

The concept of a person based on the principle of dominance was worked out by A. Ukhtomsky on the intersection of different scientific disciplines of physiology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, ethics, theology, literature, and history. The scientist was fascinated by Dostoevsky's works, especially "The Double", "The notes from underground" and "The Karamazov Brothers". These works of Dostoevsky from the point of a scientist view are internally linked. A scientist quoted in communicating with students individual pages and whole chapters of "The Karamazov Brothers". It is known that A. Ukhtomsky turned to the literature to verify the applicability of the dominant principle for the higher manifestations of a person.

The novel of Dostoevsky "The Karamazov Brothers" was the source of the psychological concept by A. Ukhtomsky (the Law of the Honored Interlocutor) believed that in the whole of Western philosophy is nothing more profound. "For me, hence it opened to me at the time the law of the honored interlocutor – as one of the most consistent and the most inevitable companions of a person in all his ways. There's also a look that a normal human worldview is a complex organic molecule, and we don't know why it was formed, we do not know why nature moves from the simple primitive equilibrium and builds complex fragile molecules. On the contrary is the smashing worldview, mental confusion and, finally, madness is the transition to the decay of a complex molecule ‒ the transition “with the release of energy”, the transition to the equilibrium with “low heat input”. We know one thing: when the human worldview at its height – it is a slender and complex molecule. The normal unifying principle is the idea and sense of God. Why this is so, we do not know. We grasp quickly the meaning and the reasons for the collapse of this “dynamic equilibrium”" [8, 299]. Literature prefers to describe manifestations of this decay and supplies its examples mainly with the sign "minus", "nothing" [3], [4]. And the images of Fyodor Pavlovich, Mitya, Ivan and even Alyosha in "The Karamazov Brothers" are isolations and withdrawals, but the elder Zosima had the prototypes by St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and the St. Ambrose of Optina and was a responsive interlocutor with the dominant feature on the face of another [7]. A. Ukhtomsky believed that such dominance is inherent in the Russian people because of their inherent aspiration to the spiritual vector of being.

He recommended to the all his friends to read "The Double" considering that it is a "philosophical-psychiatric treatise on solipsism and self-centeredness as the main features of a typical representative of European culture" [8, 401-402]. On the small insignificant official example F. Dostoevsky brilliantly demonstrates how self-absorption leads to the fact that a person around and everyone sees only himself. There are no others for him because only himself exists.

In accordance with the law of the Double, the Double is situational, justified psychophysiological state of a person. However, according to the Law of the Honored Interlocutor, a person is need in the ideal carrying the idea of dynamics. The ideal of moral perfection and is Honored Interlocutor. Behavior is a work, and a person is not an observer and participant of life. If somebody turned bad sides, a person has earned it a bad, for others he may be a good. Communication with the partner is a living process of mutual evaluation and understanding, the rebuilding of the image in which the other person is seen as valuable. And moral "standards of life" are manifested through individual awareness of the existence meaning through his own life dominants [7].

In order to change not acceptable behavior, it is not necessary to attack somebody dominant "in a forehead" that will only strengthen them. It is more useful to look for conditions to support the new dominant. However, the symptoms of the defect cannot be removed without encroaching on the main root of the blemish inside a person. In this regard, A. Ukhtomsky took the main role for religion and related higher emotions, affecting updatively a person. "Where the tradition of the Church of Christ is broken, the humanity is quickly slipping into the animal condition" [9, 270], "swine in man" [ibid, 313]. Not leaving University until his death, in 1921, he secretly took monastic vows with the name Alimpiy becoming a monk in the world [5].

Thereby we can make a valid conclusion about the unity of artistic and scientific ways of human cognition on example of the F. Dostoevsky and A. Ukhtomsky works. Russian literature of XIX century is characterized by the depth of a person transfer attitude and spiritual aspirations. The works of the great Russian writer Dostoevsky have become one of the sources of scientific heritage of the great Russian scientist Ukhtomsky in discovery of the law of dominants (the direction of internal activity and perception of the world as a whole) as well as the laws of double and honored companion (reflected moral self-identity). F. Dostoevsky, not only the writer but the thinker, psychologically accurately has revealed the contradictory nature of human existence, the patterns of the struggle between good and evil in the human soul. A. Ukhtomsky has used a deep insight about the person of Dostoevsky and organically has bound natural-scientific ideas about behavior with the laws of moral behavior deriving the meaning of human life beyond the natural, purely physiological limits.

Cognition of a person as a spiritual being, in unity of spirit, soul and body, is the most complex task to be solved by scientists, and the A. Ukhtomsky legacy can play the important role in it. The F. Dostoevsky creativity has become for him one of the connection links of cognition together in anticipation of the integral human sciences ideas and fundamental scientific principles in the dominant doctrine.